Why I think I was waitlisted: I showed no interest. I never visited and never will. I honestly just applied because it was easy.

…

I got into Columbia, Cornell and Chicago, all of which I would choose over Williams.

Good for Williams! Later commentators in the thread claim that Williams does not practice yield management, one aspect of which is the rejection of highly qualified candidates whom you expect will not attend. By rejecting them before they can reject Williams, the College improves its yield.

Does Williams practice yield management? Of course! (Comments welcome.) The valedictorian of a local (Massachusetts) high school, accepted virtually everywhere (Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, et cetera) was waitlisted by Williams. Why? Probably because she never visited and/or didn’t sign up for an alumni interview and/or gave no indication that she was interested in Williams. Might she have come if accepted? Perhaps, and that is the danger of yield management. But the College gets around this a bit by waitlisting her. If she indicates any interest in coming, the College would probably accept her in a jiffy.

Should Williams practice yield management? In an ideal world, No. But in this imperfect world it has little choice and, fortunately, the cost of doing so is low.

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11 Responses to “Yield Management”

hwc says:

The stats kids post mean absolutely nothing. Heck, Esther probably looked like a great applicant until they got to the snooty essay trashing the hicks in Kentucky.

Each college has its own concept of an ideal freshman class and allocates slots accordingly. The distribution of slots at Williams will not be the same as other colleges and universities; thus, it is hard to assume that Williams would accept and reject the same students.

The whole key to college admissions is to figure out what your are selling and then identify colleges that are buying that.

I don’t think Williams practices yield management–it just doesn’t accept kids who show absolutely no interest. If that kid who got into Cornell, Chicago, and Columbia (none of which I would choose over Williams) was as arrogant in her/his application, then the school ought not to accept her/him. It’s that simple.

Hi
I am from India and had applied to Williams. I got Waitlisted. Here are my Stats and Here’s my Essay.

Like mike, I didn’t show any interest. I am an international so I can’t visit, nor were there any interviews conducted in my country. I am the only kid in my school’s history to have ever applied to Williams(or US for that matter), so my GC was also not able to help.

Williams is my first choice, I just love the school(sadly, I wasn’t able to show that on the app). Any advice on what should I do now to get from the waitlist? I am planning to send an Essay on why I want to attend Williams(as many people have told me that the essay I mailed them wasn’t personal). A teacher of mine is also disappointed and is planning to send a letter.

My scores didn’t differ that much from the one above, except for my verbal score, which was much lower. And I didn’t visit Williams at all either, as a prefrosh. No interviews, either. And my applications to other schools didn’t differ that much. I’m not really sure I gave the indication to Williams that Williams was my first choice.

My life would be drastically different (probaby in an unfortunate way – I met my wife there!) if Williams had practiced “yield management” on me as well, because the waitlist might have made me give up on the school.

The veracity of this statement is debatable. Nevertheless, I do not believe that Williams should practice any sort of yield management. Many students for whom Williams was not their first choice end up loving the college. Furthermore, bringing a student’s level of interest into the equation allows for all sorts of gaming on the part of applicants

Most interesting point is the sharp rise in minority applicants, in particular asian applicants. Asian-American enrollment has traditionally been an area that Williams has lagged behind its peers somewhat. I wonder if this is a sign that trend has abated, or soon will.

Hard to say without knowing what the baseline was. For example, if only 300 Asian Americans applied last year, then a 35% increase would only be 400 or so this year.

To fully understand admissions, you have to know the number of applicants, the number of acceptances, and the number of enrolled. Colleges very seldom screw up and provide an ethnic breakdown of all three numbers! The best you can hope for is the occasional slip, like Swarthmore’s admissions dean telling the school newspaper a couple of years ago that the Asian American and African American acceptance rates were in the mid to high 30% range.

Each year, students of color comprise a larger percentage of the total college-bound students. Therefore, it;s not really much of surprise that the number of Asian American applicants and African-American applicants is escalating. If Williams is to remain competitive in the future, it absolutely must embrace the increasing diversity in this country.